Brace for Impact
by quantumparadigm
Summary: What if Mindoir was never hit by batarian slavers? Shepard never joined the Alliance and instead pursued her original dream - the one that would have been destroyed with her family. Years later she finds herself contracting with the Alliance on the retrofit project for the Normandy SR2 when the Reapers hit earth. AU Shepard.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: **This was written for the Mass Effect Flash Big Bang! It's sort of an AU idea that kicked around in my head about 'what if Olivia Shepard never suffered through Mindoir?' so this is the answer to that question!

Many thanks to theturtlelives for providing amazing art for this story!

And lastly, thanks to my awesome betas deadwitchwalking (coffeeandbiotics) aka my lifeline for making this story make sense and kassandra black!

Enough rambling, more story. Enjoy!

BioWare, sandbox, etc.

-O-

The comm panel surrounded by two tech experts and lit by three omni-tools exploded in a magnificent display of electrical prowess, and Olivia swore under her breath for the fifteenth time that hour. She was about ready to chuck the whole thing - but despite the large budget granted to the retrofit project, greenlighting an entire board would _not_ be okayed. Nor would her actions go without consequences. Like losing her contract with the retrofit project and being out of a job.

Not when there wasn't a physical reason for the damned thing to not be working in the first place.

"Blasted thing is a temperamental little shit," Samantha muttered.

Olivia nodded and leaned back on her heels, deactivating her 'tool. "Good thing we don't need the damn thing working yet."

"End of the week."

"You think the Admiral would approve a new board?"

Olivia eyed the Alliance specialist sitting next to her. Samantha's silence was telling. There wouldn't be a new board. Unless the current one found itself damaged beyond repair, and considering that wasn't the problem, well… no new board.

She stripped her jumpsuit down to her waist, tying the sleeves into a good old-fashioned belt and grinned when Samantha eyed her enviously. The environmental controls may be working, but the room was small and the air stuffy. And the Alliance stingy on power consumption.

She was used to the cooler environment of Mindoir was the highest temperatures were 18 Celsius.

"Goddamn cerberus tech with their weird protocols," she muttered under her breath.

"I'm gonna go grab lunch in the mess. Break time," Samantha stood up and dusted her hands on her pants. Olivia remained crouched on the floor. "Maybe food and a fresh start in an hour will help."

Olivia waved her away. "You probably have more important military things to do."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Samantha laughed.

Olivia peered up at the taller woman and shrugged. "I like choosing my own lab." She punctuated it with a grin.

Though, to be fair, she had technically chosen this ship as her current lab when she accepted the contract that had passed her desk two weeks earlier. Alliance R&D specialists had messaged her with the contract opportunity, and she'd only had to read the ship's name before accepting. Perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. Cerberus tech was one of the few things that was hard to get her hands on as a civilian engineer, short of actually working for the terrorist organization. There were some lines even she wouldn't cross.

"I don't know, the things you could do with an Alliance R&D facility backing you…"

Olivia peered up at Samantha again, marveling at how well the woman was at drawing her out of her shell. She sort of reminded her of Jill, though with a massive dose of geek instead of dancer. But if she took all that away and just looked at the raw personality… Samantha had a magnetism that was not unlike Jill's. And Jill had always been able to get her to open up.

"Could I go home for the holidays, schedule my own contractual hours, and visit whichever planet I liked when I liked?"

"Ah," the Specialist nudged her with her boot, "got me there. If you're sure you're not hungry, I'm heading to the mess."

"Not out to the compound? That wings place you guys have got is to die for."

"I've got some specs to review and we're already running behind with this."

She waved Samantha away, shaking her head, and this time the woman fled. Though really, she was one to judge considering she was skipping lunch altogether.

Olivia really was about ready to just snap the board in half, or walk away and give up. But goddamn if she wasn't stubborn and saw absolutely no reason for the damned board to _not_ be working. Alliance retrofits didn't get along with Cerberus tech at all, even though the ports all looked the same at a glance.

"EDI?" Olivia asked, casting a quick glance around what had been dubbed 'the war room'. She'd been granted a high-level contractor's security clearance, so she wasn't surprised but definitely relieved to see she had the room to herself. Benefits of working through breaks.

While there was no terminal for EDI to project a virtual representation of herself, the AI answered nonetheless.

Olivia still marveled at that little discovery. And she was honestly surprised that anyone who had so much as a peek at her server room thought EDI was something so simple as a VI.

"Yes, Olivia?"

"Level with me," she grunted as she heaved herself up, her knees protesting the extended kneeling position, "does your tech hate me?"

EDI considered the question in silence, while Olivia stretched her legs, wondering if leaping at the chance to get her hands on Cerberus tech hadn't landed her on the path to early gray hairs.

"Engineering crews have yet to finish laying down all new power cables. I have also detected misconfigured cabling in maintenance shafts B5, C2, and D7. I will alert Engineer Adams."

Lacking someone to stare at blankly, Olivia smacked her forehead against the nearest wall - and winced. Of all the possible things that it could have been, it was something so blindingly stupid as _that_. Something that should _never have happened_.

"Cable misconfiguration."

"A mix up," EDI confirmed.

"The entire morning wasted because of a cable misconfiguration."

"Yes."

She groaned. Lab techies not used to getting their hands dirty were crawling all over the ship. Retrofitting Alliance tech into a non-Alliance ship was already tough enough, getting two different systems to accept each other and play nice, unlike their real world counterparts.

"Who did it so I can strangle them?"

"I suspect that was a rhetorical question. In any case, reprimands for poor workmanship are handled by either the Chief Engineer or the Project Overseer."

"Well," Olivia raked her fingers through her hair, "let me know when the cable misconfiguration is fixed, and we'll have a working QEC."

In the meantime, she could make sure the war room table was at least programmed properly.

-O-

Olivia was hip deep inside an open hatch, strands of hair sticking to her forehead, when she felt the first shake.

Well, shake wasn't quite the most accurate description. It was a vibration that had sound but didn't, that moved the atoms of everything in its range and set them ringing with white noise. It hit her in her gut and reverberated through her chest. It carried the weight of an anchor as it moved through her body and her fingers stilled and for the smallest of seconds, the whole world silenced.

The dread hit her hard when she felt it again. This time, she scrambled out of her hole, slammed the hatch shut hoping her job was good enough, and powered the display searching for answers. Whatever those answers might be.

Hopefully good? Little 'booms' that were felt rather than heard made her rather doubt that it was a military drill but good god she held onto some sort of hope that it would be.

The comm chatter screamed static, emitting an ear-splitting keening and her hands immediately slapped her ears, blocking out the sound, before she had the good sense to actually turn it off. Blessed silence replaced the noise and she sighed in relief.

She stood next to the war room display for a few seconds, completely unsure what to do, hand frozen halfway up. Almost like she was ready to fight except she also felt limp with terror. Jostled every other moment by the near constant vibrations that could no longer in good sense be interpreted as an earthquake and were quickly reaching the point where even terrorism was becoming unlikely. Another explosion rocked through floor beneath her boots - the deck, it was called a _deck_ and any military personnel who heard her refer to it as floor were likely to scoff at her and call her a 'quaint civilian' - and she clattered to her knees.

Which was how Samantha found her a minute later, bursting into the war room without so much as waiting for the doors to open all the way.

"We've got an emergency signal setup here that seems to be working for now," she spoke rapidly - and Olivia's gut dropped impossibly more, threatening to fall through her boots into the floo-_deck_. Traynor was R&D. As were most of the people on this ship. "Engineer Adams doesn't have any crew."

Olivia looked up sharply at the squeaky desperation in Samantha's voice. The Specialist was tapping commands into the console faster than Olivia had ever seen anyone program. Samantha's words combined with the desperate way she avoided making eye contact with her made her sick to her stomach. The console beeped angrily as Sam mashed her fingers through the buttons and input the wrong command.

"Does he need crew?" She licked her lips after the silence had extended for longer than was necessary and squeezed her eyes shut. She dreaded the response that she already knew, but was hoping Traynor wouldn't say.

"Well, yes, maybe, actually definitely needs crew and there's a bit of a crisis and we don't have communications so we can't get engineers and there's no time to go search for anyone because well, 'a bit of a crisis' was a massive understatement, buildings are blowing up everywhere and we need to take off now. So your degree is in mechanical engineering, right?"

"Uhh…" Olivia spluttered, "one of them, yeah."

"Great, fantastic," Samantha crossed the room and yanked on her arm, shoving a large datapad with an updated clearance into the other, "Adams is going to need your help."

With that, the Specialist practically threw her across the threshold before she could so much as object; though the moment was somewhat ruined when she followed hot on Olivia's heels. The security field wasn't even running, which Samantha quickly explained she'd deactivated once it became clear that there were more important things to do than man a security field when Reapers were touching down every hundred meters. At least, that was what they'd been able to gather from what little chatter had come through before communications had been jammed.

"Where's the retrofit crew?" she asked as she half-ducked and was half-shoved into the elevator. The CIC was practically empty, only four souls manning the nearby stations out of twelve active terminals - and that was around the galaxy map alone.

Samantha winced. "They were on break. We're lucky we still have Adams."

The doors whispered shut, cutting Samantha off from view. "Oh."

Shit, she wasn't ready for this. Not by a long shot. There was a _reason_ she hadn't joined the Alliance, aside from all the fancy perks she'd teased Samantha with earlier. For fuck's sake, the worst crisis in her life to date had been a facility malfunction that put exactly two lives in danger - and both had walked free at the end of the day without a scratch. This… this was a whole 'nother scale of shit-tastic and she wanted to glue herself to the back of the elevator - except it didn't _have_ a back. The ceiling then. Melt into the metal and disappear.

Yet barely a minute later, Olivia found herself standing in the engineering room while Adams debriefed her really quickly on the layout and what needed doing to get the ship ready to fly. Getting her breathing under control and slowly swallowing the lump in her throat.

She could do this. She _could_.

Having something to do eased the tension in her mind, but only just. She still didn't know what the hell was happening. She had a masters in mechanical engineering, but her PhD was computer engineering - and she'd never worked with a live drive core. R&D, sure. Some testing, but nothing ever in the field, and certainly not _live field testing_ while _buildings were blowing up around them_ on the _best ship in the Alliance fleet_.

That didn't stop Adams from putting her to work once he was done explaining, hooking cables wherever there was a free port that would get the job done, not worrying about organization. Priority one, made clear by Joker frantically coordinating the effort from the cockpit over the only functioning ship-wide comm system, taking charge even though he wasn't meant to, was to get the ship off the ground. That was easier said than done. She wasn't on the engine room project of the retrofits, but the datapads still crossed her hands, so she knew approximately what state of 'ready to go' the core would be in.

And that state was 'not flyable'.

At least, not yet. Fear, earthquakes with unnatural causes, and distant gunfire was a hell of a motivator to jerry-rig the core into operating status.

She didn't let the continued shudders and mini-earthquakes affect her performance as they finally got to calibrating power input levels for eezo flow, once all the systems were reconnected - some with the new tech from the retrofits, the rest put back together with the old tech. Shoving the images of burning buildings and dead people out of her mind. Stomping hard on exceptionally visceral and vivid images of the hangar exploding around them.

Olivia allowed herself one second to breathe a sigh of relief when Joker announced that a Major and a Lieutenant were on the way, one capable of leading the ship and both capable of defending it. That moment was quickly ruined as the sound of gunfire erupted from the open docking bay one level below them, the hard metal walls doing absolutely nothing to muffle the shots.

"It's online."

Her head shot up faster than varren's at the scent of roasted pyjak as the core came to life. They'd done it.

Olivia smiled in delight and wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve, and Adams whooped as he brought up the main terminal and got systems running. She kicked a box of unused cables out of her way and jogged the length of the short hallway to monitor to the eezo levels and make sure nothing explosion-ie would happen with all the criss-crossing of tech between Cerberus and the Alliance. Nothing peaked dangerously and she gave Adams the all clear.

Then the klaxon sounded.

She ducked her ears between her hands, looking to Adams. "What the hell is that?"

"Proximity alarm!" Adams shouted back. He gestured sharply for her to join him. "Sensor systems just got power. Traynor's ad hoc comms are down, damned Reapers are jamming that, too. Network is overloaded with civilians freaking out, so even emails are slow and it's all we've got right now."

She peered around his arm as he brought up a menu that undoubtedly was reporting the same information in the war room and to the CIC. At least _that_ wasn't reliant on the network. "What about Major uhh…"

"Alenko."

She nodded. "Major Alenko and the Lieutenant. Where are they?"

As if to mock her question, the gunfire emanating from the cargo bay sputtered out and ceased. Hopefully because there was nothing else to shoot at and not because they were _dead_.

"Shit. Not here, their IDs aren't in the system."

"Would they be?" she asked as she crossed over towards one of the secondary command terminals that communicated with the CIC. She might not be at the galaxy map communications terminal, but she _might_ be able to access it and do something about communications. _That_ was her expertise and why she'd been contracted for this job in the first place.

Adams turned and looked at her after reading a message on his terminal. "Please tell me you know how to use a gun. No offense, but I don't want to hand my engine room over to a civilian."

She didn't take any. "Shotgun. Grew up on a farm."

Adams heaved a sigh of relief, while her breath quickened.

Which was how she found herself, two minutes later, with an Alliance grade shotgun from the storage room just off engineering, standing just outside the elevator in the cargo bay with two other Alliance soldiers - not marines, 'cause she'd worked with them in the CIC and both had come from an Alliance Lab based out of New York, but at least they'd gone through basic and maintained their weapons training. And they weren't dead, which was promising.

But the fact that they'd requested another body after a swarm of creatures had nearly overwhelmed the docking ramp didn't bode well. She shoved that thought out of her mind as she monitored the doors on the far side of the hangar, trying not to focus on all the bodies outside the ship. Especially the ones wearing uniforms. People fleeing the building, attempting to make it to the ship only to be run down.

Three minutes later, she'd shot her first demonic creature of the day. Five minutes later she was covered in blood and bits of she didn't even want to know what, eyes hard on the edge of the docking ramp waiting for the Major and the Lieutenant to get their asses aboard the ship so she could do something useful. Standing next to the ramp controls to close the bay ramp as soon as their boots were aboard, which would signal the pilot that they were ready to get the hell out of there.

She still had that idea about communications, but as long as they had to wait for Major Alenko and the Lieutenant, she was stuck in the cargo bay.


	2. Chapter 2

"How much farther?" Alenko ducked back behind the garden wall as Vega tossed a grenade into the middle of a band of husks that had nearly overrun their position.

"The hangar is on the other side of this courtyard!" the LT shouted, followed by a string of curses about crap shield generators and no armor.

Alenko couldn't blame him on that front. At least he had the added bonus of a biotic barrier for protection. Even still, getting to the Normandy had been one hell of a task so far. He only hoped that Admiral Anderson and Commander Hindly were either on their way or already there. Provided they'd survived the initial attack on the headquarters.

Alenko shoved those thoughts out of his mind and focused on the task at hand.

He peered around the edge of the planter next to him and examined the giant bay doors on the far side of the court, barely flinching as a spray of bullets erupted the rock. "Which bay?"

Vega advanced forward to the next section of planters while Alenko provided cover fire, throwing a few husks into a fountain with a sweep of his hand.

"I think it's the second one on the right, but I'm not sure." He punctuated his remark by waving Alenko forward before standing up to provide cover fire.

Alenko ducked out and ran towards the next piece of cover halfway across the courtyard, aiming for the hangar bay Vega had indicated. The only cover was a bench and it barely met the definition as bullets ripped through the thin metal sheeting. His barrier absorbed and deflected the ones that got through, causing him to grunt at each impact.

His amp burned in the back of his neck, hot and tingly, but he kept his barrier up and a throw at the ready.

This day was not going well. To put it mildly.

He ignored the ugly swelling deep in the pit of his stomach as he thought about the orchard. No time for that now. It would have to wait. God help him, it would have to wait.

He really hoped Anderson and Hindly had made it to the ship already. Their last communication had been iffy and then completely cut out altogether as the Reapers jammed the signal. Nothing lasted long enough to get a bead on anyone's location, let alone give orders for rendez-vous points. And he was too busy keeping bullets out of his ass that he didn't have time to think about how to begin fixing that one, lacking a QEC.

Good thing the hub ships weren't in the Sol System. Or near Arcturus for that matter.

Unfortunately, QEC's weren't so streamlined that everyone carried one in their pocket.

"How many of these goddamned things are there?" Vega shouted as he ran, dodging bullets and tossing off a flash grenade - which meant he was out of frag grenades. And since neither of them were armored, the fab units on their 'tools were next to useless. No material supply packs, no new grenades.

Alenko unleashed a massive pull field, levitating the nearest six husks and a few of the larger ones he'd caught feasting on their fallen comrades. "Each Reaper ship probably carries enough to torch a small city!"

When they finally made it across the courtyard and along the row of vehicle entrances to the hangars, both of them were breathing hard despite the significant lack of armor. They'd also left a trail of bodies in their wake.

Searching the hangars was easier than he thought it would be, though not for any reason that was good. The ones nearest to them on their mad dash had been smoking ruins filled with dead bodies. A quick glance showing that there was nothing living inside and that the Normandy, fortunately, wasn't housed within. The next two had almost unleashed hordes of husks on them before they managed to get the doors sealed shut. He thanked every god he could think of for the mercy of husks not being able to manually open doors themselves.

Something about rapid indoctrination made the brain screwy. Small mercies, but he would take what he could get at this point as he blew the locking mechanisms on them so they couldn't be easily opened.

Vega covered him as he hacked the door to the second to last hangar, the one Vega had earlier indicated he believed housed the Normandy. When the light flashed green for a fraction of a second before the door began rumbling open, Alenko held his breath. Almost unwilling to see what lay on the other side, as everything they'd encountered thus far had been death and destruction and there was a small voice steadily growing louder in the back of his, reminding him this was his _home_ city and it was being leveled around him. Faster than it took to score a goal in hockey, even when cheating and using biotics to manipulate the puck.

Both of them breathed an audible sigh of relief at seeing the hangar relatively unscathed - until they noticed the husks swarming all over the cargo ramp and the telltale sign of a lone shooter.

At least the engines were running - though a shock of guilt stabbed through him at the idea that the hold up was _them_, that the ramp would have been shut if they hadn't had to wait, and if the airlock ramp hadn't been destroyed. Undoubtedly to keep husks out of the CIC, funneling them down a singular entrance.

Instead of letting the guilt rip through him, he shoved through the bay door once it was wide enough to squeeze through, Vega following hot on his heels, and they raced towards the ramp. He prepared another pull field, as large as he could manage as he ran, ignoring the now burning sensation emanating from his headjack from high intensity biotic use, and let loose once they were within distance.

The steady firing of the shotgun didn't even falter, dropping flailing husks out of the air as the field was disturbed, and Alenko launched himself over the fallen bodies, and onto the ramp just as the last husk fell with a sickening crunch.

Before his and Vega's boots fully connected, the ramp was already swinging up causing them to stumble forward somewhat ungracefully - but Alenko couldn't fault the logic behind the decision. He would have ordered it otherwise, and was thankful that common sense prevailed.

He wasn't prepared to see two marines - scratch that, two Alliance Scientists with pistols, judging from their pips, one dead and one injured - accompanied by a civilian who appeared to be unharmed, albeit splattered with blood.

"Major Alenko?" the civilian spared him a glance as she knelt next to the fallen scientist.

Alenko nodded as Vega ran forward to help the fallen soldier to their feet and into the elevator.

The only indication the ship was moving was the subtle shift from earth gravity to the ship's own generated field, dampening the inertia of sudden movement.

"Who are you?" he asked as he followed her into the elevator. Vega carted the injured scientist in his arms, careful of the open wound in the scientists' side.

It didn't look good. There was too much blood.

"Doctor Olivia Shepard, communications engineer contracting with the Alliance for the Normandy retrofit project. Give me your hand."

The engineer didn't wait for him to comply before grabbing his wrist with one hand and yanking a datapad out of her pocket with the other. Her fingers left a trail of bloody imprints on his wrist.

She wiped her brow after scanning his handprint. "Okay, now you have clearance to use the galaxy map."

Alenko arched a brow as the doors reopened onto the crew deck and Vega got off, holding the question in the back of his mind as he ordered Vega to report back to the cargo bay ASAP in case they needed a quick extraction for Hindly and Anderson. Which, considering the entire day had already gone to shit, they probably would.

"How does a civilian have clearance to provide galaxy map authorization?"

"I don't," Doctor Shepard met his gaze steadily as the doors closed and she selected 'CIC', "but someone had to clear you, and Samantha's already got her hands full. Plus, she's technically not qualified, either. No one on this ship is used to serving shipside except for maybe the pilot and Adams. And now you and the Lieutenant."

"Alright, Doctor Shepard-"

The woman grimaced and held up a hand. "Just Olivia, please. 'Doctor' if you must."

The doors opened once more and she stepped out with all the assurance of the career military. If he ignored the red civilian jumpsuit, she'd fit right in.

"Olivia, thank god," a tech specialist, presumably Samantha, ran up to greet them. She stopped and tossed off a quick salute as Alenko stepped towards the galaxy map. A part of him wondering how in the high hell the Doctor had managed to hack the clearance override, the other part not caring because that was one less worry on his list of things to think about.

"Sitrep?" Alenko ordered as he marched towards the galaxy map command post.

"We're having problems establishing solid communications that last longer than five seconds before the Reapers jam them-"

Olivia squeezed by him and said, "I have an idea about that, actually."

Samantha nodded and continued. "Other stations are still checking in, relaying communications is slow going while also trying to fix them. EDI is doing what she can, but she's only a VI and limited to software fixes."

Alenko looked towards Olivia. "What's your idea?"

"With all due respect, it'll be easier to just do it than waste time we don't have explaining it to you, Major."

"Kaidan," he said, and paused after realizing what he'd just said, "and alright, get comms running again. Whatever it takes. Traynor, I want you relaying all messages. Make sure everything is going where it needs going and stations are checking in."

"Aye, sir." Traynor didn't bother snapping a salute before jumping to duty.

Alenko tuned out the tech talk between Traynor and Olivia. He wasn't there to be the tech specialist, he had to take command - and to do that, he needed a feel for the exceptionally barren ship. Half the battle stations weren't reporting in or showing any signs of activity. Most of the terminals in the CIC weren't even on, and techies were running about reconnecting cables and jerry-rigging everything together just to get a successful launch and stable powerful going.

This whole setup was a mess.

The roster logged only fourteen souls aboard, and if that counted the dead marine in the cargo bay and the civilian fussing around him while shouting to…Specialist Samantha Traynor, he had fourteen total Alliance personnel aboard the ship counting himself.

The Reapers _would _attack when most of the retrofit personnel were on break.

"Okay, shipwide comms are functional."

Alenko glanced down as Olivia hopped over the terminals into the middle of the galaxy map, disturbing the projectors near the edge, slamming a final cable into place, muttering about bypassing network protocols completely with a hardline. The shotgun she'd been wielding with surprising efficiency rested on the console next to him

He stepped back up onto the platform, having stepped down to dictate a communications to Traynor for her to send instead.

"_CIC, this is Adams, I see we've finally got voice communications back online. Everything is green down here."_

"Copy, Adams," Alenko replied. "Need anything?"

"_Now that the hardware side of things is taken care of, I can manage with just EDI so long as we don't take many hits."_

He leaned forward and activated the galaxy map, switching out the galactic view for combat analysis. "Joker, any word from Hindly or Anderson?"

"_Nothing, Major. Moving out before this hangar collapses around us."_

"How are communications coming?"

The Specialist glanced up at him from her terminal, then past him towards Olivia, who was now hanging out of a side-hatch directly in front of him, her boots disturbing the edge of the galaxy map.

He resisted the urge to rub his temples.

The ship shook as the hangar took a hit and the combat map exploded with data. "Brace for impact!"

The words came just a hair too late for people not used to serving aboard a ship in the middle of a warzone. People stumbled and were flung to the floor as debris knocked into the ship. He barely managed to reach forward in time and grab Olivia by her belt to prevent her from sailing out backwards. Using her like a balancing weight for the both of them before hauling her over the edge after the hits subsided.

"Thanks," she muttered. Cheeks flushed, undoubtedly from the confined space she'd just been unceremoniously ejected from.

He met her eyes as he steadied her next to him, fingers spread across both her shoulders. "Communications."

"Radio signals. Best bet."

"Yes! That means we need- we have to connect- I'll go the war room and coordinate from there!" Traynor dashed off and was out.

That time, he _did_ close his eyes and rub his temples.

Military emergency protocols would mean that Anderson and Hindly would cycle through radio bands in the event that regular communications couldn't be established.

"Pressure point."

He opened his eyes just as Olivia teetered up on her toes, still crammed between him and the rail he'd hauled her over, close enough to feel her as she rose, and pressed her fingers into a couple sensitive areas at the base of his neck that immediately eased the tension and the threatening migraine.

Her eyes locked with his. "Better?"

"Yes," the affirmation came out huskier than intended and he cleared his throat, "Yes, thanks."

Her hands slipped away and the corner of her mouth twitched. "Can I get by or should I just climb over you?"

That time, he flushed, and moved to the side so she could resume her work. Hoping she wouldn't notice even though he _knew_ she had because they'd been about three inches apart and it would have been next to impossible to not see the blush in his cheeks.

Now was absolutely not the time to dwell on pending attraction.

He looked at the shotgun again, cleared his throat again, and began coordinating the evacuation effort. Made easier with shipboard communications back online. Thoroughly amused, which he decided to not fight against as it gave him something else to focus on that wasn't his home city being destroyed around him or the location of his parents left up in the air, by Olivia muttering under her breath about the state of the ship and the retrofit project and jerry-riggin temporary solutions that were almost as likely to blow them up as save them. By her much exaggerated estimations.

"_Alenko, we've got a distress beacon for a downed ship lighting up."_

Alenko brought it up on the map. "Olivia, how are communications coming?"

She didn't even glance up at him as her fingers whizzed through buttons on two different terminals, stepping between them as needed, managing the work of three people. "Patience is a virtue."

"Not right now, it isn't."

He sympathised with her exasperated gasp, but the clock was ticking and they still needed to locate Anderson and Hindly. This beacon was the best lead they had, and distress beacons would broadcast on rotating radio bands as well as normal channels.

He looked at the map again, updating it with images captured from the external cameras outside the ship - which wasn't much, and compiling them against structural data of the city and the Alliance Complex, all to try and predict the path Hindly and Anderson would take to head towards the Normandy.

The distress beacon could line up if they headed out over rooftops and not down through the ground. The one communication he'd managed to get through before all channels were jammed to hell corroborated the rooftop theory. "Joker, head towards the signal."

"Done." Olivia scooted up next to him and shoved a headset into his hand. "Put it on."

"_Normandy, this Anderson, do you read?"_

"Admiral, what's your location?"

He motioned for Olivia to relay the communication back to Joker and thanked every god he could think of - again - when she understood his gestures and activated her 'tool.

"_By a downed gunsh- .. harbor. … -activated its distress … -con. Sen- …ort, we'v- … -unded- … -here."_

"On our way, Admiral."

"_-...jo-..."_

"Shit, Admiral! Do you copy? We're on our way," Olivia motioned towards the cockpit, then pointed at her own headset and gave him a thumbs up. "Support is on its way."

The only thing he got back was a band of static. "Sonofabitch."

"Managed to get through to a few evac shuttles in the area and notify them about the distress beacon, before those channels were cut out. We're gonna have to rotate frequencies, but our best for communication is the QEC. That can't be jammed."

"The Normandy has one?"

"Yes, but it's not online. Cable misconfiguration that gave me a headache all morning."

"Go."

She ran out before he'd even finished speaking.


	3. Chapter 3

Olivia crawled through the maintenance shaft, guided by EDI's directions and Adams' litany of what cables _should_ have been connected, combined with that the 'shitheads probably did, god rest their souls.' Her hair damp with sweat and her toolbelt catching on every damned loose bit of wiring.

By the time she made it to the last shaft EDI had indicated earlier in the day, she was grumpy, sweaty, and the blood she'd never gotten a chance to wipe off was starting to run again. She swallowed against the rising urge to vomit, wiping her forehead with the sleeve of her jumpsuit, before re-tying it around her waist.

"Alright Adams," she breathed, easing into position in front of the panel. "Tell me the last map."

"_You got the cover off?"_

She grunted as it fell away, and tossed it to the side. Someone else could find it later. She shined her light inside the hatch. "Yes."

"_This one's a goddamn mess,"_ Adams said - and then launched into a detailed configuration map for what _should_ have been done. He wasn't fucking kidding, either. She rewired half the damned thing, wondering how in the hell the color-coded ones has been routed improperly when the answer was staring them _right in the face_.

Ripping apart the old configuration was the hardest part, as she took care to not destroy anything. No backup supplies and no time to go back to engineering and fetch any.

Not for the last time did she wonder how in the hell she'd gotten herself into this mess as she swallowed another freakout session boiling deep within her. The bright amber eyes of the Major floating in her mind, calming her in ways she didn't want to consider at the moment.

He hadn't chewed her out for hacking into things she shouldn't have hacked, instead putting her to use.

And he'd _smiled_.

A brief flash of a smile that she was sure even _he_ hadn't noticed he'd done it, but a smile nonetheless.

Jesus, she needed to get a grip.

"Okay, Adams, I'm done."

"_Then get your ass to the QEC. Traynor's back in CIC with the Major, coordinating light-speed communications as best she can."_

"Fastest route?"

"Follow along this shaft," EDI instructed, "At the end, take the right juncture for maintenance shaft D. There is a ladder that will take you directly to the war room."

"You're a gem," Olivia huffed.

Then she began her trek back up two decks through the maintenance tubes because if EDI didn't say take the damn elevator, it meant this way was faster. It wouldn't have been so hilarious if she wasn't out of shape. Slender and decently fit, sure, but not used to wielding shotguns and crawling through maintenance shafts and fearing for her goddamn life.

No one was in the war room when she emerged, for which she was grateful. But only for a fraction of a second when she remembered that help would actually be _nice_.

"_Olivia, where are you?"_

She unclipped the toolbet and let it drop to the floor before answering Kaidan's call. "War room. Just fixed the cabling."

"_I know you're a civilian, but we could use some back up in the cargo bay for the evac. ETA to the LZ is three minutes."_

She swelled with pride at the thought of Kaidan asking for her help, and was glad he hadn't said 'just a civilian' - but shook her head. "No can do. You can have the shotgun or the QEC, but not both."

He didn't reply, so she set about tearing the panel off the display for what felt like the tenth time that day alone. She was just about to rewire it when the doors opened and Kaidan strode in.

He knelt down beside her. "How long will it take?"

She shrugged as he took the board from her, freeing up her hands so she could strip a new wire really fast and attach a new port. "Ten minutes, maybe? It was the cabling in the shafts giving all the hiccoughs earlier. I hope."

"And then we can communicate with the fleet?"

"Anyone that has a QEC which relays through the hub network, yes."

Okay," he was still holding onto the board, so Olivia practically had to climb in his lap to fit her new cable in. No time for modesty, though the flush in her cheeks as she felt his eyes settle on her indicated otherwise. She ignored it. And him. One with more success than the other. "You've done really good today."

His voice sent shivers down her spine and she dropped the wire and looked at him. "For a civilian, you mean?"

"Yes, I mean no!" he stammered, "I mean the world's going to shit around us and I've already had two specialists meltdown in the CIC because they're not trained for this. But you held it together and when flying a ship without her crew, that's pretty amazing."

She stared at him, his earnest shining brightly in those amber eyes, sitting half in his lap and his hand on her thigh and - oh _shit_.

"Evac."

The word was like a crack of lightning in charged air and Kaidan jumped up, almost dumping her on the floor before catching her, and she caught the board before it shattered. Cheeks bright red and how in the hell was it possible to develop an attraction to someone in the middle of a shitstorm? When they'd interacted for a combined total of twenty minutes?

Jesus, she needed to get a hold of herself, and quick. Clearly the adrenaline was getting to her.

"Okay," he said, "I need to be uhh- cargo bay."

"Right."

She avoided his eyes and he ducked out and holy shit where was she gonna go after this, what was she going to _do_?

-O-

Alenko stood behind Hindly, just off his six, as the Commander reprimanded James for his second outburst. An understandable outburst, but at the officer level, a marine should know his place - especially after the first one had been interrupted by Hackett, and hadn't gotten him anywhere.

Of course, Vega hadn't officially been assigned to this posting, so the water was murky at best. But that didn't excuse the behavior.

When Hindly told him to can it with a crack to his voice that threatened Vega to say one more word on the subject, the LT did. Though his eyes burned with unspoken anger and frustration.

Once he was sure the Lieutenant would stay in line, Hindly turned towards him.

"Alliance QEC?" Hindly asked once Hackett dismissed them.

Alenko shrugged. "Part of the retrofit project, I suppose. Lead communications tech seems to be a civilian engineer contracting with the Alliance."

Hindly cooked his head to the side. "Really?"

The slight hitch of disbelief barely registered enough for Alenko to detect. If he hadn't been looking for it, he would have missed it entirely.

"Doctor Olivia Shepard," he said, hitting the call button for the elevator, "Specialist Traynor appeared to defer to her regarding comms, and she was instrumental in getting the QEC functional, not to mention setting up the band that let us talk to you for five seconds."

"Reapers," Hindly grunted. "She in the CIC? Last time I had this ship, the QEC only talked to one person."

Alenko rubbed the back of his neck as they stepped into the cab. "War room."

"Huh?" the Commander's hand hovered above the button for the CIC for a second as he stared at Alenko.

"Behind the CIC. I can show you."

The Commander grumbled, then glanced at Alenko again. "You hit?"

"What?" Alenko looked down at his fatigues, and saw the dried blood smeared where Olivia had been pressed up against him while fixing the board. And then just… there. "No. From Olivia. She wields a shotgun. Helped defend the bay while Vega and I made a break for it."

When the door opened out onto the CIC, Alenko became _very_ aware that Hindly hadn't moved. He purposefully avoided meeting the Commander's eyes, but that didn't stop Hindly from saying, "She wields a shotgun."

Alenko flushed and crossed the threshold. "Yeah."

Olivia and Traynor were coordinating something together, but as soon as he was in view, she looked up and her mouth tugged in a smile.

"Commander Hindly needs authorization for the galaxy map," he said as she walked towards them.

She peered around him and said, "Hand."

Unlike before, she waited for the Commander to stick out his hand before scanning his prints and inputting the necessary commands to grant Hindly access to the galaxy map. As she did so, Hindly said, with Traynor standing off to the side, a datapad in her hands, "I'm gonna need a sitrep of the ship. Stations that are functional, stations that aren't. Supplies. Personnel aboard ship and who's qualified to stay. Fuel reserves and armory stock."

"Commander, I have kept an ongoing log of changes to the Normandy."

Alenko peered around for the voice, alarmed, while Traynor simply squinted her eyes. He took notice of Olivia's distinct _lack _of surprise - as did Hindly.

"Done."

"EDI," Hindly's mouth tugged up in a small grin, "Think you can send that information to my terminal?"

"Of course, Commander. All relevant data is already uploaded and ready for your inspection. I took the liberty of adding personnel recommendations based upon performance during the retrofit project and during the attack. Major Alenko should be able to corroborate my analyses for the latter category."

"But-" Traynor stammered, but Hindly halted her with a raised hand.

"Thanks, EDI. How far out from Mars are we?"

"Joker assures me we'll be there in forty-five minutes."

Alenko perked up at that. "Why the delay?"

Hindly nodded, undoubtedly about to ask the same.

"Many Reapers are orbiting earth, assaulting ships who pass through. Casualties of fleeing vessels are high. We are calculating the safest route through the Reaper defensive perimeter to ensure maximum survival. The defense net is very well organized but it is not impenetrable, and Reaper ships have adapted to intercept known flight patterns from major ports."

The silence lingered in the air once EDI was finished as they all stood there, stunned. Alenko even forgot to mention the pretty big elephant in the room that the ship's VI was actually an AI.

Hindly was the first to break the silence. "Alenko, you said there was a war room with a new QEC?"

"This way."

"Doctor Shepard?" Olivia glanced up, the same grimace on her lips as before as she insisted he refer to her as either Olivia or Doctor, but to not go military on her. "You're familiar with the QEC?"

"I am. Built half of it myself. The last leg of the job wasn't exactly pretty but it's functioning."

"You're coming with us then."

She nodded, and followed them through the vacant security check point, past the conference room and through a set of heavy doors. Hindly muttering under his breath for the whole duration of the journey, though the words sounded mostly positive regarding the changes with not a few unkind words thrown towards Cerberus. Alenko was suddenly grateful he'd never set foot on the ship pre-military redesign.

Hindly looked at Olivia. "This QEC is linked to the new Alliance hub ships?"

"It is," she slipped past him and into the comm room proper. "The armory that used to be on the other side of this wall is now full of the systems that speak to the QEC Hub ships. Duplicate systems. Each Hub ship has twenty-five incoming connections that link to various ships and redirect signals. Each ship talks to three Hub ships. Some Hub ships bounce connections between each other. Everything is redundant to a fault. Wouldn't want one Hub ship being taken out to destroy the network."

"And the Reapers can't jam it."

"Nope."

"Who maintains the system aboard the Normandy?"

Olivia glanced at him and rubbed her forehead, inadvertently smearing a streak of dirt across her skin. "Right now? Me. My crew were on break when the attack started. None of them made it back."

"Well," Hindly said, "If you're not already on EDI's list of recommendations, I'm adding you myself. We can discuss that later, though. Alenko, meet in the cargo bay in twenty to armor up for the drop."

"Aye, sir."

With that Hindly left to take continue his assessment of the ship... and Alenko found himself alone with Olivia again.

This time with nothing requesting his immediate presence, and he didn't know if it was the adrenaline or the war starting or the ten brushes with death before he'd even had lunch, but instead of finding himself mentally tripping over his own foot, worrying about what to do, he felt rather bold and so moved closer to her.

He hadn't counted on that surprising her, but she jumped nonetheless as he brushed against her arm. Twisting around to look at him, apparently having forgotten his presence. Or maybe assuming that he'd have left with Hindly.

"Sorry," he flushed as she peered up at him, not having moved away despite the alarm. "I didn't mean to startle you."

He smiled at her, and she returned it, running her fingers through her increasingly messy hair. It couldn't even said to really be contained in a ponytail anymore, as half of it was spilling around her face. Running her fingers through it certainly wasn't helping to keep it neat, but despite the disarray, it didn't detract from her appearance. Oh, he imagined some people would criticize the dirty, disheveled nature of her appearance, but he wasn't military for no reason. Dirty and disheveled was part of the job, and for some reason, those traits in an adventurous civilian were even more attractive.

"Got lost in thought," she said, "Trying to get a list going in my head of everything we threw together with tape to get working, what still needs doing, and what's going to need to be redone. We never even ran a proper diagnostics of the QEC. Lucky that the Admiral called on one that does work, but the rest need to be checked out. EDI could probably help with that."

She blew out a breath and started moving out of the comm room - and Alenko caught her arm a second time.

Going in for the kill.

He hoped he wasn't wrong. Otherwise this was about to get awkward in exactly three seconds.

He pulled her flush against him and dipped his head towards her. Her chin tilting up without his touch to encourage her, his hand still on her arm. His other one resting in the narrow dip of her waist, just above where she'd tied off her jumpsuit.

Before his lips met hers, he felt a small hand dip behind the armor vest on his back, gripping his shirt. Then their lips were touching and everything else was forgotten.

God, it'd been so long since his lips had last savored the warmth of another, and she was so _warm_ and soft and he could lose himself in her. He wanted to. He did. For a brief moment as her tongue slipped into his mouth, his lips eagerly opening to greet her, he forgot about the war, the death, the burning buildings. It was just them in that moment and nothing else.

When he finally pulled away, breathless and shaking, knees weak and heart beating fast, she leaned into him, resting her head on his chest. Gathering her own breath.

"Well," she breathed, "that was rash."

"Exciting," he countered.

"Bold."

"Reckless."

She shook her head. "Rash but absolutely not reckless."

"Mmm," he countered, "it was absolutely reckless considering the timeframe."

She pulled back and arched an eyebrow up at him. "World's going to shit around us and you're worried about reckless kissing."

"World's going to shit around us and I'm _engaging_ in reckless kissing."

He punctuated his point by crashing his lips into hers again, this kiss much fiercer and desperate. Truer to the 'reckless' nature which had defined their conversation. She voiced her approval and it reverberated through his throat, shooting straight to his gut, igniting a fire deep within him. An inferno beneath the bellows of the blacksmith of passion. Her fingers wound their way into his hair, pulling him down closer to her and he half picked her up as he wrapped his arms around her, getting her as close as he could without crushing her.

She seemed to be doing the same as her hold tightened around his neck and her hips arched into his. He groaned into her mouth, his hand inadvertently dipping lower, but she didn't pull away. Fingers brushing against sweaty bare skin beneath her shirt and then both hands were under, grabbing onto her waist.

This time when they broke apart, both were gasping for air, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. He covertly checked the time on his 'tool, still holding tight onto her - almost time to head down and he couldn't believe they'd spent the last ten minutes pressed against each other because it had felt like no time at all but the evidence was there in his face.

His brain had come to a full stop regarding everything else, completely taken aback at his own rash actions. Amazed that he'd actually done it, 'cause it wasn't something he'd normally do - but there it was. He had. And it had felt so right, and that was all her. Nothing to do with the war or the world going to shit around them. Motivators in moving, sure. But the connection?

That wasn't something that could be forced, and she had that spark that captured his attention and he held to it fast. He couldn't look away, didn't want to.

"Okay," she conceded, "reckless."

"Mmm," was all he could muster.

He sincerely hoped Hindly would hold to his word that she was here to stay. He definitely was.

-O-

Thank you so much for reading! I hope everyone enjoyed this short and sweet little 'what if' story for Olivia and Kaidan. And if anyone wants a song for these two shitheads, the one I listened to on repeat forever during the edits 'cause it fit so much it hurt was 'Paper Boats' from the Transistor soundtrack. Specifically this line: "I will always find you, like it's written in the stars" - 'cause for them, it's true. Cheers!


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